Trump says U.S. will intervene if Iran kills peaceful protesters as economic unrest spreads

President Donald Trump vowed Friday to intervene if Iran violently shot or killed peaceful protesters, as economic protests spread and turned into deadly unrest.

If Iran “kills peaceful protesters, as is their habit, the United States of America will come to their aid.” We are locked, loaded and ready to go,” Trump said in a message posted overnight to Truth Social.

Senior Iranian officials hit back, warning that U.S. intervention would trigger regional chaos and make U.S. forces in the Middle East “legitimate targets.”

This comes after protests in the Islamic Republic took a very violent turn in recent days, with at least seven deaths reported by a human rights organization and at least three by a semi-official news agency.

Protests erupted in the capital Tehran on Sunday, with crowds largely chanting their economic grievances after the country’s currency hit a record low against the dollar as prices soared.

Since then, people have taken to the streets of small towns and the protests have taken a more political turn with slogans targeting the mullahs’ regime and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the country.

Iran’s economy has been battered by years of sanctions, and a 12-day war with Israel last June – when the US military also attacked the country’s nuclear facilities – added to the popular sense of unease. A water crisis also led to taps drying up late last year.

Iran’s civilian government, led by President Masoud Pezeshkian, has indicated it is willing to negotiate with the protesters and has recognized their “legitimate demands.”

But in response to Trump, Khamenei adviser Ali Shamkhani warned that “any intervention that comes close to Iran’s security, under any pretext, would be cut off before it can act.”

And Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said in a post on X that Trump’s threat makes “all US bases and forces in the region legitimate targets in response to any possible adventurism.”

Ali Larijani, former speaker of Parliament and secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, claimed, without providing evidence, that Israel and the United States were fueling the escalation of the protests.

Deaths were reported Thursday among protesters and security forces.

Gunshots can be heard in several protest videos posted online since Wednesday. The semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday that three people were killed and 17 others injured in what it said was an attack on a police station in the town of Azna in Iran’s western Lorestan province.

A video posted online and geotagged by NBC News and broadcast Thursday shows two cars on fire in front of an Azna police station, to the applause of a nearby crowd as several shots ring out.

In another video posted online and geotagged by NBC News and released Thursday, a large crowd in the town of Marvdasht in southern Iran’s Fars province is seen moving towards a group of security forces while chanting “Shameless!”

The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights named three men it said were protesters killed in Azna, a man killed by security forces in Marvdasht, two men killed by security forces in Lordegan in Chaharmahal province and Bakhtiari in central Iran, and a man killed by security forces in Fuladshahr in Isfahan province.

Hengaw also named Amirhesam Khodayari Fard as a protester who was killed by security forces in the town of Kuhdasht in western Iran’s Lorestan province on Wednesday. The semi-official Tasnim news agency said Khodayari Fard was a member of the Basij militia, overseen by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who it said was killed in a clash with protesters.

NBC News could not independently determine which version of events is accurate.

The protests appear to be the largest in the Islamic Republic since the Women, Life, Freedom protests of 2022 and 2023, which posed a serious challenge to authorities and only subsided after a severe crackdown by security forces that led to the deaths of some 500 people and the arrest of thousands.

“I think the regime is really stuck in the sense that it can’t address any of the grievances and yet it can’t tolerate people protesting,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, told NBC News in a telephone interview.

“So violence has always been their only tool,” Ghaemi said.

The government appeared to take a step to quell this week’s unrest by declaring a public holiday on Wednesday, citing the cold weather. This created a four-day break, including the traditional Iranian weekend and a religious holiday for Imam Ali’s birthday on Saturday.

Security forces are likely to be deployed in large numbers on Saturday, which also marks the anniversary of the death of Commander-in-Chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 U.S. drone strike.

Trump threatened Iran with unspecified “consequences” after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida earlier this week. He said Iran “may be behaving badly” and suggested it was trying to rebuild its nuclear sites after the United States struck three last year.

Pezeshkian said in an article on X that his country’s response to “any aggressive action would be harsh and regrettable.”